Tag Archives: Russia

At this writing, it appears official that the Russian Duma has accepted the Crimean vote to again become part of Russia, and Vladimir Putin has just signed that annexation into law. The West will wail and wring its collective hands, asserting (correctly) that this was a violation of the Ukrainian constitution.

But, wait a minute. All of Ukraine was part of the USSR until its 1989 break-up. It still consists of three separate regions and ethnic groups: Crimea, predominantly Russian-speaking, Russian Orthodox and identifying as “Russian,” Eastern Ukraine, the same, and Western Ukraine (Kiev), predominantly bilingual (Ukrainian being the primary language) and predominantly Roman Catholic and pro-West.

Crimea also has a sizable Tatar minority of Muslims, said to be around 15%, who were treated brutally by Russia and largely expelled from Crimea under the old USSR. Crimea has changed hands many times since the 1100’s, but identifying as “Russian” is nothing new.

Ukraine, on the other hand, was a shotgun marriage of different regions by the USSR. Since their notoriously corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych fled for his life, Ukraine’s provisional government has been in a shambles. It is ill-equipped at the moment to deal with what, from its perspective, is a grave national crisis.

I caught Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) on the Charlie Rose show today. As an ex-military man, McCain seems to understand Comrade Putin’s designs on Crimea quite well enough. On the domestic front, though, he joins the U.S. right-wing hue and cry that the Obama Administration is just sitting on its hands doing nothing, whereas every good ex-military officer know that tough retaliatory action is the only thing Putin understands.

Like so many in our minority party, McCain sees things through a special filter. This filter passes all the colors of the spectrum except Blue. It also picks up artifacts in the spectrum that won’t show in any bandpass filter, because they don’t exist.

Why did U.S. President Barack Obama let this happen?That’s the question everyone in Washington, DC is asking. It’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask—if you are incapable of seeing beyond the very dark hole into which you’ve placed your entire head.

A clever (and tongue in cheek) 6-point review of the Ukraine situation. From the Daily KOS. George W. Bush, out of Ukraine NOW!